


K-D

by kuro49



Series: XZ-AO-WMD [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, mention of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1646093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Choi has never been a man of faith, but in case all else fails, he still has Stacker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	K-D

**Author's Note:**

> Written as one of two outtakes that I can't get out of my head because while I never intend to continue this series of mine, apparently there is a little bit more to be told. This runs parallel to the events in XZ-AO-WMD, which remains the main storyline of the series.
> 
> Conveniently, it’s Tendo’s birthday too so have some love for our favourite LOCCENT officer! \o/
> 
> All my love to [Ka](http://tumblethroughthekaleidoscope.tumblr.com/post/86042509014/k-d-tendo-stacker-by-kuro49-aka-setsailslash) who made the lovely graphic to go with this :D

 

 

His story starts in San Francisco on a day looking more and more like the end of the world with the ferries rocking out on the water, the Golden Gate Bridge tearing into two, and fighter planes cutting through the fog like it's World War II.

He doesn’t know the rest of the world calls it Trespasser until much later, when the smell of death isn’t clinging to him like a second skin, when the stench of ammonia doesn’t trail his every step.

For all of those three days, Tendo Choi watches as the monster takes San Francisco apart with his rosary curled tightly around his wrist like a noose would around his neck.

 

He can still see the water crashing against the docks, the ferry almost taken out by the waves. Blue is the colour of death, and it is that very same day that Tendo Choi learns.

_You don’t turn your back to the ocean._

There is probably a Chinese proverb out there that describes this. A four worded saying that he has never bothered to learn from his grandfather when the man is still alive, living in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown with only a grandson to depend on.

The hand that grips his own loosens but his doesn’t.

Tendo holds on for a long time after, not that it erases any of the regret.

 

Before Tokyo, before Mako Mori makes her name as the first of the XZs, Tendo has heard of them in whispers in the aftermath of San Francisco. No one knows them as the XZs then, just that those who don’t die come back a little different, that when they bleed, it is corrosive blue with every cut.

They are the answers to questions no one wants to ask.

They are also the questions to answers no one has.

 

Tendo is assigned to the Anchorage Shatterdome.

This is where he meets Stacker Pentecost for the first time.

Tendo Choi has never met the man before but the Marshal is someone with a reputation that precedes his name, Marshal Stacker Pentecost is a man that can be recognized by silhouette alone.

Between the two of them, it starts with four cups of coffee.

One of which Tendo Choi reluctantly departs with, setting three next to his console and with a grin, hands the last to the man standing in the middle of LOCCENT during a graveyard shift.

Tendo does not believe in fate. But he does believe in faith.

This isn’t that, this won’t be that for many more years to come.

“So, what brings you here, Marshal?”

Tendo turns to the other man with a quirk to his mouth, doesn’t try to hide his curiosity behind the porcelain rim of any one of his cups. Because if LOCCENT is a fishbowl, then Tendo Choi can be the biggest fish of them all.

 

They don’t make it a habit.

But if it happens more often than not, that’s only fair.

There’s not much else in the Icebox.

 

“You are a man of faith, Mr. Choi?”

Stacker nods at the rosary wrapped around his wrist, the beads a permanent fixture since K-Day, the weight of the cross a thing of constant in the centre of his palm. And it reminds Tendo of a conversation the two of them have had over another four cups of coffee, three for himself and one for the Marshal, and somewhere along the way the Marshal isn’t always just the Marshal.

_Who’d you lose?_

No one joins because they want to save the world. If you’re rich enough, you move inland, and if you’re lucky enough to be living next to the Atlantic, you stay there, you don’t come to the Icebox of all places to save the world unless you have vengeance, like ice in your veins.

Stepping over lines and lines, Tendo continues. And Stacker doesn’t stop him.

_But I mean, who hasn’t? I was in San Francisco._

Because like his own, Stacker’s story starts on K-Day too.

_My sister was too._

Stacker Pentecost’s use of past tense is different than Tendo’s own that very first time.

Tendo looks out through the glass windows of LOCCENT, into the launch bays where Brawler Yukon and Chrome Brutus stand. His eyes train on the empty space between the two Jaeger for when Gipsy Danger comes off the assembly line for PPDC’s next pilots, a pair of barely legal brothers Tendo’s only heard of.

And when he turns back, Stacker’s eyes have never once left him.

“When all else fails, Marshal.”

 

Stacker has always looked to the sky.

What he learns is that he should’ve been looking to the ocean instead.

With the waves in turmoil and the water crashing against the shores, his sister’s fighter jet burning on impact, Tamsin’s fears and regrets come to life in their shared headspace before she blacks out in the harness next to him. Stacker brings Onibaba down and nearly loses the one thing that keeps his sister a permanent fixture in his head.

Stacker has always looked to the sky.

What he learns is that when he looks down, there is a little girl with her heart in her hands, covered in blue.

 

In the conversations that follow that graveyard shift, Tendo learns that Stacker has a past, tells him _arson_ and doesn’t ask to for Tendo's felony in return.

And in the conversations following that, there aren’t so many words.

Just the heat of his tongue pushing prayers between his lips, the pressure of each rosary bead pressing into the soft underside of Stacker’s wrist as he pulls him closer to the bed. Tendo makes short work of their clothes, has the man naked and sprawled across the mattress dipping beneath both their combined weight.

He doesn’t know how to say that he likes this, or that he likes him a lot.

So Tendo traces the circuitry scars across the right side of Stacker’s body, touches each line with reverence and trusts that Stacker will know. And Stacker does when he has Tendo bracing himself above him, dress shirt dropped off of the side of the bed. This is where Stacker gets to drop all pretence of unfamiliarity and traces his fingers underneath the bright red suspenders bare against Tendo’s skin, touching where there are lines of ink in place of scars on his flesh.

Stacker stares in rapture, caught by the display of tattoos across the muscles of his back with every minor shift. Tendo is reaching out with both hands, curling one around Stacker’s jaw and the other ghosting just over his mouth before Stacker is opening up to take his fingers in with tongue and teeth.

And these aren’t the moments when Stacker likes to forget the world. These are the ones where he remembers some of which he can still keep from the war, safe and sound where the Kaiju has bleed over but not outright take.

Pulling back, Tendo pushes both of Stacker’s hands above his head, grinds down with his hips to pin the man to the bed with his full weight.

It goes unsaid that these are the ones where he gets to _have_ in return for all the times he’s given when Tendo replaces his fingers with his mouth, lips curling with promise and tongue easing for more.

 

As J-Tech Chief LOCCENT Officer, there are many matters for him attend to.

Many of which pertains to the end of the world and just as many pertaining to a man named Stacker Pentecost and how Tendo really shouldn’t be fucking his immediate commanding officer.

But chain of command is a mess, has been since before they let a child soldier pilot a billion dollars machine. Has been since they understood the side effects of the drift with the Gage twins and still continued to accept family into the Jaeger Program.

Like they are grooming for compatibility without any knowledge of just what it does and how it fucks with the head and the hands that ache to ground each another into the sheets.

For a long time, he doesn’t know how to look at the Becket brothers in the eyes, not because of what they will become in time (blue in their veins, hiveminds in their heads) but because of what they do. Some days, he still can’t look Hercules Hansen in the eyes. He tells himself it shouldn’t matter, and it really doesn’t when they are faced with a world about to end.

But then again, he tells himself many things.

It’s not without a little bit of manipulation that Tendo Choi manages to get out of bed in the morning when he can barely look himself in the mirror, what with the world going to hell, and their heroes right with it.

 

When he wakes up to the alarm that isn’t a Kaiju one, Tendo almost breathes out something like relief but it is all a damn shame when he is pulling away from the loose embrace Stacker has him in.

“Go back to bed, it’s just my shift.”

“…It’s always your shift.”

“Well, you can tell my boss that.”

Stacker brushes his mouth to the line of his jaw, eyes still closed against the dim lights of the room. And there is something perfect to moments like these where Tendo can almost pretend that Stacker Pentecost isn’t battle ready, where he doesn’t have to remember that this war will always end with the man getting back into Coyote Tango with Mako.

“You can tell him yourself, Choi.”

Tendo lets out a laugh, and gives Stacker the kiss he’s been seeking for.

 

Knifehead doesn’t kill the Becket boys.

But it does come close.

 

When Tendo finds the two of them in their room, duffel bags half full and sitting opened on their beds, Tendo imagines that he can understand why they need to go from here.

“Mr. Choi.”

It is Raleigh that notices him first, and it’s still the same smile when he greets him. Tendo isn’t foolish enough to ask when he can see the way they keep a distance from him, almost politely so if he doesn’t know them but he does and this will always be too careful to be the Becket boys at their best.

Tendo shakes his head, steps into their room and drags the closest one into a hug, feels Yancy stiffen in his embrace, sees Raleigh suck in a breath, fear and pain wrapped in a haze of blue Tendo’s only heard of in passing.

He understands but it doesn’t mean that he has to hate it any less.

“Take care of yourselves.”

Tendo tells them, smile sad, looking at the brothers in their eyes and hoping that there will be a day when he will see them again and the world won’t be ending. Yancy nods, smile matching his little brother’s, holds on to Tendo for one more moment before letting go.

“We will.”

 

In the war efforts that follow, there is the Mark III Restoration Project.

 

Standing there in the Jaeger Bay with Mako at his side, wearing iron on her skin as though it’s armour, he has to wonder. “So, it’s not the Becket boys you’re doing this for?”

“There is no reason, they do not know me.”

Tendo wants to take the loneliness from her and her voice, soothe the ache and promise her the world, and he can almost imagine how easy it must have been for Stacker to take her in.

“They will.”

The scratches of her blue paint, the thought of those Becket boys out in the world, and Stacker’s daughter standing next to him with Gipsy Danger’s schematics in her hands, Tendo doesn’t add the obvious from the way Gipsy is already crooning to have Mako Mori’s hands on her heart.

_And they will love you._

(But not before the restored Gipsy Danger ends up with another pair of dead Jaeger pilots in her Conn-Pod. They don’t know the events to come in a war like this, they also don’t know that it is only because of Mako that the Becket brothers even considered coming back with Stacker at all.)

 

There is the Mark III Restoration Project.

And then there is Coyote Tango.

 

When Stacker joins Tendo in LOCCENT hours later, he brings four cups of coffee, three for him and one for himself. All of which go cold by Tendo’s console when the Kaiju alarm sounds, waking the dome for its final battle.

Because it is not so bad that he can’t get back inside a Jaeger. Tendo is not Coyote’s pilots or her crew but Stacker knows that he does look to her to bring them back. Because it is not so good that there isn’t that risk even with the Metharocin they have him on.

 

“Better suit up quick, Rangers.”

With Stacker standing behind him, his voice over the comms doesn’t break. It is only when his finger leaves the button and his voice is no longer carrying through the Shatterdome that he adds, “I think that also includes you, Marshal. Mako isn’t going to be able to pilot Coyote herself.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that, Mr. Choi, she’s going to try to prove you wrong.”

Tendo smiles something faint because what he has with Stacker is not fate, it is a conversation from years ago of arson shared over coffee from Tendo’s secret stash. It is the Icebox and Mako’s schematic diagrams of Gipsy Danger lying spread out across the his console as he mans LOCCENT and heads up the Mark III Restoration Project with her.

It is Stacker Pentecost getting back into a Jaeger to save the world.

It is Tendo Choi enduring the rest of what’s to come.

When Stacker leans down to press a brief kiss to Tendo’s temple, Tendo doesn’t let his voice break either.

“Like you aren’t doing the same thing yourself, Stacker.”

When he goes, Tendo knows better than to hold on.

 

He remembers an old man by the sea, him on his knees, prayer stuck in his throat at the sight of Yeye with his last breath going out of him. There is Trespasser taking San Francisco apart, fog heavy over the crashing waves, a younger Stacker Pentecost out there in the world.

_Endure this._

 

XXX Kuro

**Author's Note:**

> That line about LOCCENT as a fishbowl comes from [Cerulean_Spork’s headcanons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1007127/chapters/1996956).


End file.
